


The Missing Sister

by ConspiracyNoir



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 22:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12142464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConspiracyNoir/pseuds/ConspiracyNoir
Summary: Just another lousy day at the office of Dana Scully, PI, who used to have a career in the FBI and now doesn't have much more than a broken coffee machine. Then comes a client. A fellow ex-fibbie, who thought he solved the mystery of his missing sister years earlier.Only now he thinks that he was lied to, and the truth is still out there. And Scully, PI, is here to help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this about a year ago and then pulled it from the web.
> 
> It is already written, though not polished. I hope to post chapters weekly.
> 
> Also, this whole fic is gen/pre-relationship. If I write sequels that may change. But for now, you've been warned.

DC was unseasonably cold that November and the office of Dana Scully, Private Investigator was colder. Dana Scully, Private Investigator looked pretty cold herself. She was wearing three layers of coat and a sour look. At the end of this look was a fat, balding man with fingers like swollen hot-dogs. The fourth hot-dog on the left hand had a slight indent in its lower half where the ring that was now sitting on the desk had sat not long before

‘It’s always the divorcees,’ Scully muttered to herself. This was just as well because the fat man had not paused his rant to listen to her.

‘ – and if that was what she wanted, she oughta have said, because I would happily have – ’

‘Yes,’ agreed Scully, although it was unclear to what. ‘Unfortunately I have a very important client on his way Mr. Sanderson, so if we could just settle the bill…’

‘I don’t see how anything could be more important than a man’s life crumbling around him.’ Sanderson tossed cash across the desk and it scattered into messy piles. Scully gathered the notes and counted them with precise, swift fingers. She rolled her chair around to face a small metal safe and unlocked this with the same pointed neatness. There was a lot of other cash in the safe and for a moment Sanderson looked mildly interested. Scully transferred it all into a white envelope. She shut the safe with a bang and Sanderson flinched as though his head was in the way. Scully looked at him with a single eyebrow arched into a sharp point. The point suggested he co-operate.

‘Did you want the prints, or just the negative?’ she asked crisply. Sanderson looked at the photos he’d flung across her desk minutes earlier. His lip curled.

‘Just the negative. I don’t know if I’ll even tell her about this, you know,’ he said with the air of someone who wants to be asked why.

‘Oh.’ Scully passed him the negative.

‘I think I’ll just forget it ever happened. Be the bigger man. ’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And that way they’re just sitting up my sleeve, waiting for a rainy day, you know.’

‘Right.’ The arched eyebrow was close to Scully’s hairline.

‘I’m sure that’s not what you’re used to hearing from jilted husbands, but I – ’

There was an uncertain knock at the door. Scully leapt up and deposited Sanderson’s ring into one fat hot-dog hand. ‘That’s my eleven o’clock. If you ever need a detective again, you know where I am, but don’t forget to call first; I’m very busy, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Sanderson said, his eyes darting to the peeling green wallpaper and the metal wall heater radiating cool.

‘Pleasure doing business,’ Scully said, leading Sanderson by the arm to the door, and pulling in the man waiting on the other side with a ‘Do come in, I’m sorry to keep you waiting’ and a sharp grip on the forearm.

When Sanderson was gone Scully strode to a bookshelf that held no books and little else. She switched on an espresso machine perched awkwardly next to a withered cactus. It let out a reluctant splutter and Scully turned to her visitor. Although her face remained fixed in its expression of tight control she looked tired, like she was being held up by shoulder pads alone.

‘I’m sorry just to show up without an appointment,’ he said. ‘I tried calling but it said the number was disconnected.’

‘I’ve changed it recently. Unsatisfied client. Coffee?’

The man gave the espresso machine a dubious look. It was now half-heartedly pouring black sludge into a white mug. ‘Do you have milk?’ he asked hopefully.

Scully pulled a hotel-sized long-life milk from a cupboard and tipped it in to the mug. She placed a second mug under the machine and pulled out a small bottle of Johnnie Walker. The man’s eyes darted to the clock above her head.

‘Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?’ he said.

She shrugged and placed his coffee on the other side of her desk. ‘Not when you’ve had the morning I have.’

The man took a seat in front of the coffee. He was good-looking and his suit was expensive but worn as though it wasn’t. He moved with an easy grace born of privilege, but something in his eyes was mildly concerned, like a pastor who’s just been issued his first parking ticket and is sure there must have been some mistake. His hands cradled the mug for warmth. Scully’s eyes flicked down to his unblemished ring finger and his followed suit. The eyes met and had a conversation. Scully acknowledged the awkward silence with a slight rearranging of her pout, and the man’s face briefly lost its worried look as he grinned handsomely.

‘I guess you get a lot of divorce cases.’

‘It’s a common reason to seek out a private investigator.’

‘What else is common? Insurance cheats…’ The pause was pregnant with triplets. ‘Missing persons?’

Scully stirred a good dollop of whiskey into her coffee and sat down. The espresso machine gave a relieved click. ‘You’re searching for someone?’

The man shifted. ‘Well. Yes, sort of. I did. For many years. And now maybe I am again. I – Maybe I should start with my name.’ He grimaced at the prospect. ‘I’m Fox Mulder. I used to work for the FBI.’

‘Ah,’ Scully said.

‘Yes, maybe you’ve heard of me. I know you used to be a FBI agent yourself, and I know I had a reputation.’

‘I don’t put much store on reputations, Mr. Mulder.’

‘Well that’s lucky for me, because I don’t imagine mine is much good.’

‘It’s the good reputations you have to watch out for most. Why don’t you start from the beginning.’

‘The beginning? Well, I guess that was… my sister disappeared when she was 8 and I was 12. It tore my family apart and my parents divorced a few years later. I studied psychology and joined the FBI. I was in the BSU and then VCU. I helped them crack several notorious cases.’

Scully nodded. Her neat oval fingernails clicked gently against the desk until she noticed and laid her hands flat. Mulder watched them with the blank interest of a commuter watching roadwork.

‘Everything was fine. I was engaged, I was successful, I… well, I started having these dreams, and wondering. About my sister, about what happened to her.’ His eyes drifted to the thin gold cross around her neck. ‘I sound like I’m in confession.’

‘Go on, Mr. Mulder.’

‘Please, just Mulder.’ Just Mulder took his sip of his coffee, grimaced, coughed to disguise the grimace, and set the mug down again. ‘I started seeing a shrink. He was… unorthodox. Actually, he was a quack. I underwent hypno regression therapy and it had me convinced that I’d repressed memories of my sister being kidnapped, that she was taken by – by aliens.’ He sighed. ‘I know it sounds crazy.’

‘The phenomenon of retrieving fabricated memories was very common in the late 1980s. It’s not at all surprising that someone who was dealing with significant personal trauma was vulnerable to it.’

‘Well anyway, it was all hokey. Not long after they found her body. Roche…’ His face twisted in anger but his voice retained its monotonous slur. ‘In 1990, I wrote a profile that caught one John Lee Roche, a serial killer active throughout the 1980s. A year later he cracked and admitted he’d actually begun his spree years earlier. He told us where to find several more bodies, including Samantha’s. At first I wondered why he admitted it. I found out not long after,’ his sneer deepened, ‘when he was allowed to transfer to a low-security prison for the remainder of his sentence.’

Scully’s eyebrows drew together and her pout pinched disapprovingly. ‘That’s highly irregular. They must have really valued his cooperation.’

‘You’re telling me. The guy admits to killing four more girls than previously suspected, one of them my sister, and he gets rewarded for it… As you can imagine, I wasn’t very happy with the FBI after that. I made a few bad calls. Went through a nasty divorce. They thought maybe it would be better if I stepped away from fieldwork.’

‘And so you left the Bureau.’

‘I guess I didn’t see any point in staying. I’d had enough of thinking like criminals; I wanted to help victims. I entered private practice as a trauma counselor, mainly pediatric... It gives me a purpose.’

Scully raised her right eyebrow and surveyed his suit. ‘You seem to have found a great deal of purpose.’

Mulder coughed and rearranged his jacket. ‘We’re the same type, aren’t we? Used-up ex-fibbies who just want to help people?’

‘Helping scorned husbands is not the same thing as helping cute children, and certainly not as well remunerated.’

‘Are you always so cynical?’

‘I’m sure you’ve heard the one about days ending with “y”.’ Scully was tapping her nails again. ‘But please, continue. Bring me to today.’

‘Well, as I said, I don’t ming my new work. Since Diana… In many ways, it’s become my life. It’s not as exciting as the FBI, and it can be lonely, but it has its rewards. I don’t miss the horrors of VCU, and it certainly doesn’t miss me.’

‘Your skills were highly regarded.’

‘Yeah, but not so much my eccentricities.’ Mulder waved the thought away with a Rolex-clad wrist. ‘Anyway, that’s all in the past. Then about two weeks ago I received a letter. In it was a photo.’ He produced a crumpled photo of a brown-haired woman in a big brown coat. He handed it to Scully and she turned it over. On the back of it was written angela forbes, 12 gardine place, winchester va.

‘She looks exactly like Samantha.’

‘Your sister?’

‘Yes, but a grown woman. The way she would look now.’

‘Except she’s dead.’

‘I know it sounds crazy. I thought someone was playing a sick joke. But out of curiosity I called my father. He lives in Martha’s Vineyard. He said to come up for the weekend, we could talk about it. He didn’t sound worried, but he did sound… I think cautious is the word. I was packing the next day when I got a call from the police and all of a sudden I was packing for a funeral instead. He’d killed himself.’

‘How?’

Mulder blinked. ‘With a bullet. Does it matter?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Well, anyway… as you can imagine, I was curious about – well, I wanted to know. So last week after the funeral, I went to Winchester to see for myself. But there was nothing to see. She’d moved the week before.’

‘Moved where?’

‘No one knew. Finally a neighbor said she thought she was going overseas. Her husband works at USPS and Angela asked him how long it takes to get a passport, but he said it takes at least a couple of weeks and she wasn’t happy to hear that. Angela had bought the house outright five years before but she was working in a drugstore. She kept to herself, went away to visit family now and then.’

‘So you want me to find this woman and figure out how her photo came to be under your door.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why me?’

Mulder shrugged. ‘You came recommended.’

At this Scully laughed. The sound echoed in her cold stark office. She seemed surprised to hear it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, the mask of neutral professionalism slipping back over her face. ‘It’s just I don’t often get recommended.’

‘You seem to be doing well enough,’ Mulder said politely. His eyes flickered to the wilting cactus.

Scully looked as though she was considering laughing again but seemed to decide it would be too much effort and settled for a slight smile. ‘I do fine. But people who retain private investigators rarely leave as satisfied customers. Have you considered that that you might not like what I find?’

Mulder shrugged. ‘I’m happy with my life, but I’m not in a relationship, I don’t have any children and I have one less parent than I did a fortnight ago. I don’t have anything to lose.’

Scully surveyed him evenly and at length. ‘You’d be surprised what you can lose,’ she said at last, and turned to her appointment book. ‘I charge $30 per hour and expenses. You look like you can afford it so I’ll take a retainer of $600. Sign here, and here’s your photo back. Now are you going to tell me who recommended me?’

‘I get this crackpot magazine, _The Lone Gunman_? A while back they reviewed your practice, said you’re willing to take on unusual cases. I thought my case was fairly unusual.’

‘I won’t argue with that.’ Mulder gave Scully a fat wad of cash and the signed contract and she rolled her chair over to the safe where she set about fiddling with the door. ‘Tell me, what is someone like you doing subscribing to _The Lone Gunman_?’

‘I met its editors once upon a time. We went through… an interesting experience together and a few months later they sent me their first edition and offered me a subscription. I’ve always been kind of interested in the paranormal, so I thought why not? It makes for interesting reading.’

Scully smiled, caught herself at it, and replaced it with the pout before rolling her chair back to the desk. ‘They’re good people,’ she conceded.

‘Tell me, are you the same Dana Scully that pens the Skeptic’s Column every month?’

‘Sure,’ said Scully, ‘but it’s past 12 and I’d hate to have to start charging you to chat.’

‘Of course,’ Mulder said. He slapped his hands on his knees in a way that was probably meant to look decisive. ‘So now what? Can I have your cellphone number in case something comes up?’

Scully slipped him a business card. ‘I don’t have a cellphone. I do however have an answering machine. You’re welcome to leave a message.’

Mulder looked astonished. ‘You don’t have a cellphone? What if you need to make a call outside the house?’

‘There’s this little thing called a payphone. Tell you what, I’ll treat you and give you a call from one when I have an update. You won’t even know the difference.’

Once Mulder was gone Scully pressed the button on the espresso machine but it produced only a dignified click. Scully sighed and poured a dollop of whiskey into Mulder’s coffee. She sat for some minutes taking small sips and examining the wall. She slid the photographs of Sanderson’s wife and the tennis coach into a manila folder, then unlocked a large filing cabinet and placed the folder in it. The cabinet was in no danger of overflowing. Scully shut and locked the cabinet, downed the rest of the coffee, looked longingly at an ashtray on the windowsill, put on a huge and unflattering overcoat and strode purposefully to the door which she shut with the same satisfying click as those of her high heels on the linoleum.

Scully walked through cold grey streets under thick grey clouds and into a big grey building. She strode directly into a ground-floor office which bore the sign almond letting agency and property managers and proceeded to have an argument with a bleach-blonde young secretary with big black eyelashes. The argument consisted of the secretary chewing gum and making her eyes wider as though she didn’t understand, and Scully sighing impatiently and demanding to speak to Mr. Almond. The secretary repeated that Mr. Almond was out several times before Mr. Almond had evidently had enough of the ruckus and emerged from a back office huffing, ‘It’s okay Celeste, I’ll see her.’

The argument in Mr. Almond’s office must not have ended so well for Scully because she emerged with a sour look on her face. She walked to the nearest tobacconist, high heels slapping the ground with chastisement. She bought cigarettes, a lighter and change for the payphone. When she entered the phone booth outside she dialed furiously and lit the cigarette at the same time. She was inhaling it when a voice on the other end said:

‘You’ve reached the office of Whiteman & Co. Insurance, how may I direct your call?’

‘Give it a rest, Langly, it’s me,’ Scully scowled. ‘Put me on speaker.’

‘Guys, it’s Scully!’ Much shuffling in the background. ‘What can we help you with?’

‘Got a funny little case,’ Scully said. ‘Guy says he’s a subscriber. Former fed, name of Fox Mulder.’

‘Mulder… Mulder…’ came Byers’ measured tone. ‘We met him down at Baltimore, right? I always did find it odd that he subscribed.’

‘He sometimes writes in with video recommendations of an – er – adult variety,’ Frohike added.

‘Charming.’ Scully coughed.

‘Say, Scully, you’re not smoking again, are you?’ asked Frohike.

‘Scully, you told us you quit,’ Byers admonished.

‘I did quit and then I didn’t any more. If you want to be disappointed in me there’s a club for that. I’ll put you in touch with my brother, he’s chairman of the board.’ She blew out a trail of smoke as wispy as the tendrils of November sun creeping into the booth. ‘I want you to find out what you can on this Mulder guy. He was known at the FBI as a kook but a smart one. His latest thing is he’s found his dead sister only she’s alive, and now she’s missing. I want to know about her and I want to know what Mulder’s father knew about her too.’

‘Knew?’

‘He killed himself about a week ago, just after Mulder asked about her.’

Langly whistled. ‘Something smells fishy.’

‘Yeah, so you can knock fifty percent off your consulting fee for the enjoyment you’ll get out of it.’

‘You know you don’t have to pay us,’ Frohike said.

‘And you know I don’t like owing favors. Especially not when you ask for them in NTSC format.’

‘Hey, I’d take photographs.’

Scully smiled around her cigarette. ‘The girl’s name is Angela Forbes. Address is 12 Gardine with a “G” Place, Winchester, Virginia. I’m going there now but Mulder says she hasn’t been there for a week or so. Call my office when you know more. Don’t say you’re from the IRS again, a customer overheard the answer machine message and got spooked.’

As they were saying their goodbyes Scully’s change ran out. She smoked and watched the street for a while. Nothing looked more out of place than anything else. A woman banged on the phone booth door and Scully raised an eyebrow at her. The woman yelled some. Scully left the booth and walked in the opposite direction to her office.

She took a series of ugly grey trains through ugly grey fields. When she got out at Winchester she went to the municipal library where a shrewish woman with squinty eyes regarded her with suspicion. Reluctantly she handed Scully a phone book.

‘Try the post office next time,’ she spat.

Scully found two listings for drugstores, both on the main street. She turned to the map at the back of the book.

Gardine Place was only a ten minute walk. The clouds were darker than in DC and were halfheartedly spitting their contents over the streets, making Scully’s hair frizzy and her cigarette wet. 12 Gardine was an ugly pale pink colonial that looked as though people would call it a good place to raise children. The blinds were drawn and a neighbor was glaring at Scully from behind her own blinds. A garbage truck lumbered down the street.

Scully walked back to the main street and found Sammy’s Wares, a tired-looking store whose considerable stock was covered in a thick layer of dust. A skinny woman with baggy, wrinkled skin more suited to someone twice her age was moving the dust around on some China doll heads when Scully entered. At the sound of the chime she looked up with a hopeful grin.

‘Anything I can help you with, ma’am?’

‘Actually there is. I’m looking for a woman named Angela Forbes, do you know her?’

The woman’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak. Before she could do so, a curtain up the back parted and in blustered a large man with a tight blond wig and a loose Southern drawl. He was Sammy, it was a pleasure to meet her, how could he help, get back to the dusting Karen, I can handle it from here.

After a few formalities and more than one clammy handshake, Sammy said: ‘Sure, Angela worked here. She was a fine enough employee up ’til she left without giving notice, but unless you’re gonna pay me might fine I ain’t putting my name to nothing.’

‘Like I said, sir, I’m just writing a story about attrition in the world of small town retail. I won’t be using any names.’

‘You got slow writing for a journalist,’ he said, screwing up his nose at the notebook Scully was clutching. ‘What are you, a debt collector? Process server? ’Cause I’m telling you, I ain’t testifying to nothing. I know what it’s like once they got you in the system. I’m saying nothing.’

‘I’m not asking you to testify to anything, sir, I’m just a journalist. All I wanted to know was whether you had any insight as to why Ms. Forbes left so suddenly, because my commuter readers are very interested in the attrition problem.’ The owner raised a thick eyebrow that was definitely not blond. ‘Well if you get any ideas, you or any of your employees are welcome to give me a call, or for the next while I’ll be at the bar on the corner there.’ Scully gave him a card that said malory albright, _washington quarterly_ and nodded at Karen, who offered her a shy smile.

A pie and a whiskey neat later Karen sat on the stool next to Scully holding an unlit cigarette with shaking hands. She was wearing gold hoop earrings and a nervous expression.

‘I know you’re not writing a story about attrition,’ she said.

Scully took a sip of her drink.

‘I don’t want you to use my name in – in the story. Just call me “a friend”, right. That’s what they always call them in the papers.’

‘Okay,’ said Scully.

Karen tried to light the cigarette but her fingers were too slow. Scully lit her own lighter and held it to the cigarette. Karen inhaled the first puff and shot Scully a grateful smile. The smile might once have been dazzling but now needed a lot of dental work.

‘Really we was more like sisters. Angela never had a sister and neither did I, so she adopted me kinda. Lent me money ’till rent day if I was hard up for cash, stuff like that. She was good people. Kept herself to herself, like, but no one has nothing bad to say about her, do they?’

‘No, they don’t,’ assured Scully.

‘I hope you nail those men good when you write your story. I hope you nail them to the wall by their balls.’

‘I will. But first I have to get in contact with Angela, to hear her side of the story.’

‘Of course, of course. Mind, she’s not one for talking. Near the end there she clammed up completely, and next minute she had to run away from it all. I’m just saying, you and I, we know the papers do good, but Angie’s secretive. She hardly spoke about them at all.’

‘But she did speak about them.’

‘A little, sure. She kept saying she had enemies, she had to be protected. Angela wasn’t her real name though she never told me what was. Her daddy put her there to be protected but now he said she’d have to move again. I thought she was crazy. She asked me to hold on to her mail like, said she’d send an address to forward it when she could. She gave me the key to the letterbox and next day she was gone. And then they all come looking for her…’

‘Others have been looking for her?’

‘Sure, horrible men. Rat-faced and smug, always asking questions. I didn’t trust them one bit.’

‘What did they want to know?’

‘Same as you: where she’s gone, if she’d said anything before she left. I didn’t tell them nothing, don’t you worry. They didn’t leave no card either. All in black… I just knew they weren’t there to help Angie and I thought geez, Kar, maybe she wasn’t crazy all along. I want to help her, Ms. Albright. She was good to me, good to my little girl. I know I can trust you to keep my name out of the story. But you have to write it. They’re not good men. Angie didn’t want to leave, but she knew she wasn’t safe…’

‘Tell me, Kathy, did Angela give you any forwarding details? Any way you could contact her?’

‘No, but I been checking her box every day.’ Karen opened the woven red bag sitting on her lap and pulled up a paper bag which she handed to Scully. ‘That’s all that’s come so far. There’s been nothing for three days, and if you ask me it’s those men. They’ve found a way to – to interrupt her mail, or whatever it’s called. But you’re good people, aren’t you? You’re gonna help Karen?’

‘Yes,’ Scully said, taking the paper bag of envelopes. ‘Take my card and please, if Karen gets in touch with you…’

‘I’ll give you a call, yeah. Only… well, we don’t have a phone at home, see, and Sammy gets real mad if I use the work phone…’

‘Of course,’ Scully said, and handed Karen a $10 bill. ‘That should be enough for some quarters, don’t you think? And maybe a treat for your little girl.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ Kathy said, clutching the bill tight.

‘Please, take it. Angela would want you to. But can I ask one little favor? Please don’t tell anyone else you saw me, or how to get in touch with Angela. I don’t want there to be any chance of her enemies finding out, and you never know who they’ll pretend to be.’

‘Of course not. I promise,’ Kathy said. Scully smiled warmly, but by the time she had left the bar and Kathy was paying for a congratulatory drink with the $10 bill, her lips were cracking in the cold wet air.

Scully returned to the train station and boarded another big grey train. Snow was falling in Winchester by the time she left, but it was very hot in the carriage and Scully pressed her head against the icy window for some relief. She rubbed a circle into the condensation and sat looking through it, watching the clouds getting heavier as the train rattled on towards the big smoke.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Streetlights and neon shop signs filtered through the frosted glass and lit Scully’s office a smoky shade of grey. Scully kept her coat and gloves on and opened the mail. One envelope contained a receipt for a speeding fine and an optimistic request for any further donations to the City of Winchester. Several held utility bills. The padded letter from pet co. incorporated contained an unmarked floppy disc. Scully inserted this into a computer and it let out an indignant whine. A light above the disc drive lit up green and something inside it started thudding like a defibrillated heart.

Scully emptied the bottle of whiskey into her dirty coffee mug. The phone rang.

‘Office of Dana Scully, Private Investigator.’

‘Your boy’s the real deal,’ Frohike said. ‘His sister died in ’78 and the body was found six years ago. Mulder’s personnel file ends a few months later. Says he “thought it would be best to pursue other employment”.’

‘I don’t think it was Mulder who thought that.’

‘He’s done nicely, anyhow. Made a name for himself in pediatric psychology. Got a neat stock of shares, more with his father’s death by the look of things. Donates to the Society for Missing Children and the Democrats. Subscribed to several _very_ interesting publications, and I don’t mean _The Lone Gunman_.’

‘I’ll set you up a lunch date to discuss it,’ Scully said. ‘What about the sister?’

‘The dead one or the missing one?’

‘Dead one first.’

‘Well, she’s kind of missing too. She was found, sure enough, and some guy Roche gave a pretty little confession. Death certificate’s been updated with “homicide” but there’s no record of the autopsy anywhere, and don’t ask me where the corpse has gone because I can’t trace that either.’

Scully whistled. ‘Sounds familiar.’

‘Yeah, we thought you might have a unique perspective on the situation.’

Scully lit a cigarette. ‘What about Angela?’

‘Funny thing, that. She has a birth certificate, a social security number, a degree, and a pretty pedestrian existence since she went to Washington College class of ’86.’

‘And before that?’

‘Apart from the birth certificate, issued in ’82, nothing at all.’

‘What about since Mulder got her photo?’

‘She hired a moving van a fortnight ago then cancelled it the day after Mulder Senior knocked himself off. I’d say that was when she left town. She withdrew $5000 from the bank and hasn’t touched her accounts since.’

‘I met a girl today who reckons she had some pretty nasty men after her. Know anything about that?’

‘We haven’t seen anything suggesting it but these people know how to cover their tracks.’

Scully took a long slow drag of her cigarette with the same expression of vicious pleasure as she might have worn dragging some of those people through the rack. Byers’ voice came in from a second line, breathless and concerned.

‘There’s something else you need to know, Scully.’

‘Seems that’s usually the case.’

‘Yes, well. It’s just that before he retired, Fox Mulder’s father worked for the State Department.’

‘So did a lot of fellows.’

‘I know, but did you read the August edition of the _Gunman_? The State Department has been destroying old filing locations and selling buildings that were never previously acknowledged to be their property. Something fishy went on there and it was about the time that this Mulder’s father was working there… and his daughter was kidnapped.’

‘Right,’ said Scully. ‘Keep digging into Angela, she has to be somewhere. I’ll call you if anything interesting comes up.’

The disc from pet co. contained only one spreadsheet document. Scully double-clicked on it and the computer gave a grumbled protest. The cursor turned into an egg timer and the green light flashed on. Scully seemed to take this as a hint and sat back, opening the final envelope. This one was from raleigh real estate and contained a copy of a property lease agreement in the name of Angela Forbes for a unit on Fort Street, Raleigh, North Carolina. On it was written in girlish handwriting:

‘Dear Ms Forbes, Please sign these documents and return them to us and you’ll be all set for your move. See you in Raleigh!’

Scully nodded crisply, tossed her cigarette butt into the coffee mug, and pocketed the sheet of paper. The computer screen now showed the spreadsheet. It had five columns and several pages worth of rows of long numbers. Scully sighed and pressed print. A loud clanging began in the printer sitting near the door. Not wanting to be left out the phone started ringing again.

‘Scully PI.’

‘Hey, uh, Dr. Scully?’

‘Just Scully. Mulder?’

‘Yeah, uh, I was wondering if you’ve found anything? You haven’t called, and I’ve just been to a dinner near your office. I thought maybe I could come over and hear an update.’

Scully’s eyes fixed on the empty bottle of whiskey on the bookshelf. ‘No. But I know a certain establishment not far away.’

 

Mulder shuffled into the bar stool next to Scully uneasily, clutching his blazer tight against his body as though touching the other patrons would diminish his hourly rate. Scully pushed a small tumbler of brown liquid towards him.

‘I know you don’t like to drink so I thought I’d find out why.’

Mulder smiled uneasily. ‘I thought you were investigating on my behalf, not investigating me.’

Scully shrugged and finished her drink. ‘If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s to trust no one.’

‘Sounds like a lonely way to live.’

‘I’ve heard about your video collection, Mulder. I figure I’m not the only one who’s learned not to get too attached to people.’

Mulder blushed only a little and changed the subject with Martha’s Vineyard manners. ‘Tell me though, what have you found out about what I’m actually paying you to investigate?’

‘Angela was planning to be missing but something made her move the date up. Someone else is looking for her, and very possibly us too. Have you been followed?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly watch out for that kind of thing.’

‘You remember how?’

‘I haven’t gone completely soft. I’ll keep an eye out.’

‘Okay. In the meantime, I have an address.’

Mulder’s eyes went wide. ‘You’ve found Angela?’

‘I’ve found where she was planning to move a couple weeks ago. Hopefully when your father’s death pushed up the timetable she went with the house she’d almost sorted out.’

Mulder nodded. ‘It’s a lead, anyway.’

‘This might be another. It mean anything to you?’

Mulder stared at the spreadsheet for several minutes while Scully drank his drink. He raised an eyebrow at her as she set the empty glass on the bench.

‘Is drinking a compulsory requirement of getting a PI license or something?’

‘It’s more a skill you pick up on the job.’ Scully passed the empty glasses to a bartender who gave her a salute. ‘Unusual for an agent not to drink, though. Religion? Like it a little much?’

Mulder coughed. ‘Family history.’

An elegant finger was making curious circles on the condensation left by Mulder’s glass. Mulder watched it with interest.

‘Your father?’ Scully asked. Mulder’s eyes jerked up to meet hers. Behind an angry glare there was the kind of little boy lost vulnerability that some men know how to use to their advantage, and others try to hide behind angry glares.

‘What makes you think that?’ His voice was not very even.

‘Do you know if your father was involved in secret work when he was with the State Department?’

‘Of course he wasn’t.’

‘He might have been. Maybe your mother knew, maybe that’s why they divorced.’

‘They divorced because of Sam.’

‘You said that, but how do you know?’

‘It tore them apart. I guess my mother blamed my father for not protecting her. I guess he blamed himself.’

‘It’s a big ask to expect you can protect a child from a freak serial killer.’

Mulder shrugged and waved his Rolex around a bit. ‘Can we focus on the issue here? I have no idea what’s going on in this document. I assume you do.’

‘Not at all,’ Scully said. ‘I’ll run it past the gunmen when we have a chance. But for now – ’

‘For now, Raleigh’s only a few hours away _._ ’ He gripped her forearm and shook it slightly. ‘If we leave now we can see her tonight!’

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ Scully cautioned, taking her forearm back and straightening the black cuff of her shirt. ‘All we have is an unsigned lease agreement.’

‘It’s her, I can feel it. It’s my sister.’

‘Mulder, there is a man who confessed to your sister’s murder.’

‘They could have made a mistake. Maybe Roche was confused. And Sam ran away and then she had – had amnesia, or something.’

‘As someone trained as a physician, I can assure you that amnesia that functions in such a manner is exceptionally rare.’

‘I’m a psychologist. I know that. But it’s not impossible. Things happen every day that defy our understanding of the world.’

Scully’s pout made an appearance. ‘In my experience, the most straightforward explanation is usually the best.’

‘But strange things do happen. You wear a cross. Are you telling me you don’t believe that there are things beyond our understanding? Supernatural phenomenon, or – or miracles.’

Scully’s face set into a curious pout. Her words were guarded as she spoke. ‘You’re correct, I am religious. Some things… I _want_ to believe them,’ she said. ‘But wanting is a dangerous thing, Mulder. I’ve seen stronger men than you dig their own grave in search for treasure.’

Mulder grinned wryly. ‘That’s why I’m paying you to have my back,’ he said, standing up. ‘Come on, Scully, grab your shovel. We’re going to Raleigh.’

 

It was snowing when they left the bar. Scully said she had to get something from her office and Mulder insisted on driving her there. Scully raised an eyebrow as she climbed into a big black Range Rover.

‘I know, I know, but it gets better gas mileage.’

‘You must go through a lot of gas.’

The car’s headlights illuminated the snow stark white. The rest of the night was blacker than ever in comparison. Inside the car was a cozy atmosphere of joint endeavor. Mulder and Scully said nothing but they said it comfortably. Scully had even sacrificed her erect carriage in favor of leaning on the window. Her breaths made little circles of condensation.

Mulder parked neatly outside Scully’s office and accompanied her inside. His hand lingered a few inches from her tailbone as he followed her up a dark narrow stairway.

The door labeled Dana Scully, Private Investigator hung slightly ajar. Mulder and Scully’s eyes met. Scully approached it with an FBI creep: knees bent, shoulder first, hands clutched together as though they’d like to be holding a gun. Mulder came in tall but wary, as he might walk through the aisles at his local adult video store. Scully nudged the door open with her shoulder and scanned the room. She relaxed the pose and strode forthrightly inside.

The door was missing a lock and the office was missing a computer. The filing cabinet had been jimmied open but nothing was missing. The safe was unopened but had withstood beating to remain that way. Scully unlocked it and put a envelope thick with cash into her briefcase.

‘They could have just taken the disc,’ she grumbled and dialed a number on the phone. She didn’t wait for W and Z Insurance Agency to ask how they could help. ‘Frohike, I’m off to Raleigh overnight. Got a lead on the sister. Don’t call me, I won’t answer and you wouldn’t like the sort of people who might. I’ll visit you tomorrow with a very interesting document.’ She slammed the phone down and made for the door. ‘Come on, I don’t have all night.’

‘You’re not going to call the police?’

‘You know the police in this town. Would you bother?’

Mulder shrugged his concession and followed her out. They climbed into the car in silence and Mulder began to drive. Scully took the cigarette lighter from the dash and sucked the heat into her cigarette with the quiet need of a junky inserting a needle. Snow came in through the open window and not much smoke went out. Mulder turned to her like he wanted to say something but then his eyes and his thought got lost in Scully’s jawline.

‘Take a right here,’ Scully said.

‘That’s the wrong way.’

‘It’s the right way to the train station.’

‘I’m happy to drive.’

‘You’re not coming. Take the right.’

‘What do you mean I’m not coming? This is my case, this is my car, I’m coming.’

Scully surveyed him and did not look impressed by the findings. ‘This is your case but I’m your agent. I’m not getting bogged down by some gung-ho shrink caught up in concern for his dead sister and due process.’

‘I was a federal agent same as you, I know how to handle myself.’

‘With your Rolex watch and your Range Rover with heated seats? A fed gone soft’s more trouble than no fed at all, they think they can do more than they can. You’ve got a good life here, Mr. Mulder, and by the looks of it this is some mighty dangerous business you’re trying to handle. You let me do the handling and compensate me nicely for it when I’m done.’

‘I haven’t waited over twenty years to find a woman who might be my sister only to stay tucked up in bed while I send someone else after her. I’m going to Raleigh whether you like it or not, and I’d rather do it with my PI than without her. Consider it a performance review.’

Scully’s cigarette flew from her fingers and was gone. She rolled up the window with a soft huff.

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘but I choose the radio station.’

‘Fine.’

They drove through the snow to the smooth strains of late-night jazz and the steady hum of the heating. As they left the lights of the city behind the darkness crept in closer, and Mulder and Scully say staring straight into the cold black night with matching expressions of grim determination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much happened in this chapter, sorry, but next time sh*t starts to get real.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Once out of the city the only other traffic was long-haul trucks whose tired reflectors cast Mulder and Scully in an exhausted red. Snow drifted to the ground; Scully drifted off. Mulder sat forward and clutched the steering wheel as tight as his jaw. His eyes blinked in time with the windscreen wipers.

Just outside Nashville Mulder stopped at a highway diner. Scully scowled at him through her coffee and bed hair.

‘You shouldn’t have let me fall asleep,’ she said.

‘It was a shame to miss out on your charming conversation,’ he mused, sipping his coffee.

An hour later they pulled onto Fort Street and were greeted by the red, white and blue trifecta: cops, ambulance and fire department. Despite the late hour the neighbors’ lights were mostly on and one woman had even decided it was time to take out the trash. She stood in her dressing gown and curlers, paying lots of attention to the scene and very little to her garbage.

Mulder parked. In the still cold air their footsteps were loud and in step.

‘You the Feds?’ asked one of the cops.

‘No,’ said Mulder as Scully said ‘Yes’. They shared a glance that was longer than it had to be.

‘We’re consultants,’ Mulder said with a charming grin. ‘They called us in to help consult on the – uh – situation.’

‘I’m a pathologist,’ Scully said. ‘Is someone – ’

‘They’re trying to resuscitate her in the ambulance, but I don’t think it’s gonna do her a whole lotta good,’ the cop said. ‘Looked to me like her neck was broke clean in half.’

‘She fell from the roof?’ Scully asked as Mulder stared uneasily at the ambulance.

‘Naw. Definitely a jumper.’

‘You know that for sure? Were there any witnesses?’

The cop blinked. ‘Hell, lady, you think she was cleaning out her gutters this time of morning?’

‘You get many people jumping off their roofs in the middle of the night?’

‘You decide you wanna end it, you wanna end it then and there,’ said the cop.

‘But no witnesses?’

‘None that I heard of, but we only just cordoned the area – Hey, youse! Over here! We got your consultants!’

Two men who had just emerged from a black sedan turned towards them. Scully gave a little start and her hand clutched Mulder’s. The men strode towards them. The man with the face and haircut of an overgrown frat boy was looking at Scully with slight curiosity and strong disgust. The rat-faced man with slicked-back hair and a small smug smile regarded Mulder warily. Scully dropped his hand.

‘I don’t remember calling a consultant,’ the frat man said, eyes still fixed on Scully, ‘and if I did it certainly wouldn’t have been this one. What’s the matter, Dana, private practice not working out so you decided to nudge your way back into federal business?’

‘What makes a suicide a federal matter?’ Mulder demanded.

‘What makes you so interested?’ asked the rat-faced man.

‘Agent Colton – ’ Scully said.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ A female paramedic approached at a determined pace.

‘I am,’ both FBI agents said. They glared at each other.

‘As Senior Partner, I am in charge,’ said Agent Colton.

‘Of course.’ The rat-faced man returned to glaring at Mulder.

‘Well, sir, she didn’t make it,’ said the paramedic. ‘Shall we send the body to the morgue?’

‘Send it to Quantico, care of Agent Karl Mixon.’

‘Mixon still doing your dirty work then, Tom?’

The blond agent sneered at Scully as though she were a particularly sticky piece of gum attached to his shoe that he wished he could get rid of by stomping on. ‘It’s not my fault some people don’t know how to play nicely with others, Dana. But then again there must be something wrong with you if you’re teaming up with Spooky Mulder here.’

‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ Mulder said.

‘What is Mixon going to find, Tom? What are you covering up now?’

‘No one’s covering anything up,’ said the rat-faced man.

‘Shut up Krycek,’ said Tom. ‘Dana, Mr. Mulder, you have no right to be here and you’re certainly not wanted. Leave us real investigators to do our work and trundle off back to whatever spooky hole you found each other in.’

‘As citizens we have a right to know what our FBI is investigating,’ Mulder said.

Tom laughed. Even Krycek let out a dry chuckle.

‘Get them out of here,’ Agent Colton ordered a nearby cop. ‘And please God don’t let me ever see them again.’

‘There you go, all we needed was the magic word.’ Mulder dragged Scully away by the arm. She switched her glare from Agent Colton to Mulder.

‘If you think you can man-handle just because I’m – ’ The tirade stopped. The glare had moved to a new player. A wrinkled man with thin hair and an excessive comb over stood smoking a cigarette and watching the ambulance drive away. It was one of those moments when time slows right down and the only noise you hear are your own breaths. Even the smoke from the cigarette hung still around the smoker’s head. Mulder stopped pulling Scully and Scully stopped pulling back.

Slowly, the man with the cigarette turned and met Scully’s gaze dead-on. He smiled at her, a twisted smile like a gash carved in a tree trunk. Her face was blue in the frozen lights.

Then with a whoosh time started again, and sped up, and Mulder was dragging her away.

They ran to their car, Scully’s heels clacking. In the windshield was a small envelope.

‘If this godforsaken town has traffic cops out in the middle of the night – ’

‘Shh,’ spat Scully, opening the envelope.

Inside was a single piece of paper, and on it was printed in pencil four letters: S.R.S.G.

Mulder and Scully’s eyes met.

‘We have to head back to DC and look it up,’ Mulder said.

Scully shook her head. ‘No time. We’ll look here. Even godforsaken towns have libraries.’

 

 

They climbed in the car.

‘Hurry up,’ Scully hissed. He hurried so hard he burnt rubber as they zoomed out of the street.

‘Well that should make a statement,’ Mulder chuckled as he made a right turn.

Scully didn’t look at him and didn’t laugh. She was staring straight in front of her, eyebrows knitted together in a worried V. The radio wasn’t on and the traffic was still quiet, although the sun was rising.

‘You gonna tell me who that man was?’ Mulder asked as they eased their way through the sleepy, uneasy suburbs.

‘I don’t know who he is,’ Scully said, ‘but I know he’s dangerous.’

‘Who do you know that isn’t… Is he FBI?’

‘Government, I think. If Tom’s jumping, you know he’s somewhere in the background telling him how high.’

‘Tom was your partner?’

‘Yes.’

Mulder whistled. ‘Bad luck.’

‘He wasn’t always like that. We were friends at the Academy. We were friends at work, too, until…’

‘Until your smoking man there told him to get jumping?’

‘Something like that.’

‘What about the other guy? Krycek?’

‘He must be Tom’s new partner. By the looks of it they deserve each other.’

‘Hm,’ Mulder said. He pulled them into a parking lot where a small white building nestled between large grey buildings proclaimed itself to be RALEIGH MUNICIPAL LIBRARY. One of the large grey buildings was a coffee shop and the other had sofas in the window.

All three were very dark inside. The sun rose behind them as a promise.

Mulder tilted his seat back and took a bag of sunflower seeds from where it had been tucked in the driver’s-side door. He offered it to Scully, who shook his head, so he shrugged and helped himself.

There was a long time when the only sounds were crackling sunflower seeds.

Then Mulder said, ‘You have another partner after Agent Colton?’

Scully drew in a breath and hissed it out again. ‘No.’

Mulder nodded. He didn’t seem like he was going to ask anything more, which might be why Scully offered it.

‘I was trained as a medical doctor. I liked to do my own autopsies if I had the opportunity. One day I was asked to do an – unusual – autopsy.’ Mulder still said nothing. Scully was fiddling with the seam on her skirt. Mulder put a sunflower seed in his mouth, sucked it respectfully. ‘Do you believe in God, Mulder?’

‘Would you, if your sister was kidnapped when you were 12?’

Scully shrugged. ‘I never knew any other upbringing than a religious one. I did believe in God. Many of my colleagues wondered how I could reconcile faith in science and faith in God. But I definitely believed.’ She grinned wryly and withdrew a cigarette. ‘Long story short, your sister’s isn’t the only autopsy file to go missing, and I’m pretty sure I still believe in God, but I’m not so sure he’s a just one.’

Mulder looked concerned, either for Scully or for the ash falling on his leather seats. ‘That’s the short story, what’s the long one?’

‘Oh, it’d bore you.’

‘I don’t think you ever could.’

Scully smiled and tossed her cigarette out the window, barely smoked. ‘You don’t believe in God. I’ll ask you something else: do you believe in aliens?’

Mulder laughed. ‘Does anyone?’

‘I do,’ Scully said. ‘I cut one open in front of my eyes. It had green blood, corrosive. I lost half of my autopsy table.’

Mulder laughed harder. ‘Come on Scully, that’s crazy.’

‘Call me spooky,’ she said.

‘Yeah but – you don’t actually believe that? You’ve been reading the Lone Gunmen too long.’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Scully said softly, her eyes on the rays of sun rising above the rooftops. ‘All I know is that the body I autopsied looked like a human on the outside, but on the inside… that wasn’t human. It couldn’t have been.’ She sighed. ‘I finished the autopsy and began my report, and the next thing I know that smoking man was in our meeting with AD Kersch, asking me what I thought I’d seen and suggesting that maybe I was working too hard, maybe it was the lighting in the bay, maybe the deceased just had an unusual blood type.’

‘And you’re sure it wasn’t any of that.’

‘Of course I’m sure. No blood type can melt a metal bench. I didn’t write “this is an extra terrestrial, I’ve decided to name him Chewbacca” on the report. All I submitted were factual observations, an explanation for why I couldn’t determine the cause of death as the internal organs were atypical and also melting my equipment. I requested to have the tissue sample analyzed. Well, that didn’t happen, and none of it made it to the final report. Tom was the senior agent, he had the final say, and his say was that we should do what our new friend asked.’ She shivered. Mulder patted her arm, gently, with the back of his fingers.

Scully went on. ‘I tried to get a sample anyway. The body was gone. I knew it wasn’t a fluke but I pretended like it was. How’s that for ethics in government? Daddy would have been so proud.’

‘Your parents were big believers in the government?’

‘In God and in government, and to them they were the same thing. My father was a naval captain. He didn’t approve of the FBI, he wanted me to be a medical doctor. He didn’t hold well with rebelling against his wishes.’

Mulder’s laugh was dry like the winter air. ‘Tough family, if joining the FBI is considered rebellion.’

‘Yeah, well. Good thing he died before I got kicked out.’

Mulder didn’t laugh at that. ‘They kicked you out? Even I didn’t get kicked out.’

‘Near on. We kept getting jobs that led nowhere. Murders we couldn’t solve, missing bodies we couldn’t find... Something never added up. I thought it was just bad luck. Then I realized that we were on hush-up jobs. Tom was clawing his way into favor over the corpses of dead-end cases.’

‘Into whose favor? That cigarette man’s?’

‘His, others’. The AD seemed pretty fond of him and no one wanted to hear when I said Tom had destroyed evidence.’

‘You saw him doing it?’

‘Sure. He was getting cocky. I saw him toss out notes from an interview with a little girl. She said she’d been taken by aliens, it was quite a story – but _someone_ had done it, and Tom didn’t care to find out who. Maybe it was aliens. We’ll never know.’ She pulled the packet of cigarettes from her pocket and pushed one into her mouth. ‘Tom tried to convince me to join him. Said it was for the good of our country, and if not that then for the good of our careers.’ Her slim fingers moved eloquently over the lighter. Mulder was watching intently and didn’t fill the lull in conversation. ‘To me, service was everything, but I didn’t serve the government. I served the people. If some elements in the government weren’t going to let me do my job…’ She exhaled. Smoke framed her face like a hazy photograph. ‘A call came in. A whistleblower from the state department, had something big. Needed federal protection until he testified. The protection had to be “sensitive”.’ She snorted. ‘That meant they wanted Tom to hush it up. Well, I was curious, and Tom was at the dentist’s. So I went to the guy’s hotel.’

Scully paused to tap ash into the ashtray. Her fingers were the pathologist’s, measured and exacting. Her eyes never left Mulder’s. ‘His name was Paul. He didn’t have a family but he was engaged and he showed me pictures, there were step-children and all. He didn’t trust the fibbies but he trusted me. He had files that contained proof of his allegations, had ’em on a disc in a bank vault. Anything happen to him, he wanted me to take it to some rag called The Lone Gunmen. They published conspiracy stories and his was a doozy. Corruption all the way up to the White House, keeping secrets about alien experimentation from the American people.’ Tap-tap-tap. ‘He gave me the key to the vault. I watched over him ’til dawn. Then Tom comes storming in. Demands to know why I didn’t tell him we had an assignment and insists on taking over. He called up Occupational Health. Reported me for working too long hours,’ Scully scoffed. Mulder granted her a smile.

The cigarette was almost out so Scully tossed it in the ashtray where they both watched it wither. In the distance a clock tower struck 7. It was a wholesome sound and out of place. In the ashtray, only the filter was left, smoldering.

Scully’s voice was hoarse: ‘He was dead by the time I woke up. Heart attack, they said. The body was cremated the same day. So I went to the bank.’ She was reaching for another cigarette but Mulder put his hand on her wrist. He stroked it once, and set it back on her knee. She smiled weakly and spoke fast, like a child rushing through their Hail Marys.

‘I found the disc all right. I called the Lone Gunmen and they said they could meet me at some park in Georgetown later that day. I went to the mall. I didn’t – I couldn’t go home. I was worried they’d know I had the disc, because the bank recorded my ID and the vault was in Paul’s name. So I didn’t go home. But I’d forgotten… my mother…’ She blinked several times, quickly. ‘Mom and I were meant to meet for lunch. She has a spare key… I guess she came over to get me. The neighbors reported hearing gunshots. Now,’ she addressed his lips, ‘the only family I have is one brother who won’t speak to me, one who won’t speak to any of us, and a sister in a retreat in Mexico who thinks she’s speaking to our parents on the astral plane.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Sorry. Not a very cheerful start to the day.’

‘It was a lot to go through without a support network,’ Mulder said softly. ‘It must have been hard.’

Scully shrugged. She turned back towards the rooftops and her eyes stopped focussing. She resumed her story in the same fast, dull tone. ‘As I was saying. Tom found me on the way to the park. With the disc in my possession. They threatened me with treason.’ She shrugged. Mulder removed his hand from hers. ‘At least they didn’t get the Gunmen. In the end, they said they wouldn’t press charges if I kept my mouth shut. So I left the FBI. A few weeks later I got a letter from the North American Medical Association saying I’d been formally banned from practice, due to poor character.’ She smiled ruefully at Mulder. ‘I guess you think I’m making it up, huh?’

Mulder whistled. ‘It’s quite a story.’

‘Well, it’s true,’ Scully said, stubbing out the cigarette. ‘You have to know who you’re dealing with. Them… and me.’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Mulder said in his psychologist voice.

‘I killed my own mother,’ Scully said. ‘I thought I was doing right but I – that’s who you’re dealing with, is all.’

‘All I got from that story is that if I want anyone on my side, it’s you.’ Mulder opened his door. ‘Come on, looks like the coffee shop’s open. We can wait it out there ’til someone opens the library.’

 

 

They drank coffee and picked at a pecan pie. Mulder called a secretary called Erin and asked her to cancel his clients for the day. He offered Scully his cell phone to do the same. She laughed and took a bite of pie.

Finally, Mulder said, ‘This is what I don’t understand: if Agents Colton and Krycek were sent there in advance to cover up Angela’s murder, why was the Smoking Man there? Doesn’t that look a little suspicious?’

Scully shrugged. ‘Seems he thinks he’s above suspicion.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mulder said. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Maybe he was there because they knew we’d be there,’ Scully said. ‘You _sure_ you haven’t been followed?’

‘I was watching out for it. More than you were anyway, snoring away.’

Scully shrugged. ‘Well, one way or another, they were there. Here’s what’s more important: _why_ was your sister killed? Who put you on to her in the first place? Who put the envelope on our car? And what’s S.R.S.G.?’

 

 

The Raleigh Municipal Library had many answers to that question. SRSG was an additive, an energy company and a brand of pet food; and also the Special Representative to the Secretary-General of the United States was visiting DC that weekend.

‘I think he’s more likely than cat food,’ Mulder said and called to book an appointment with him. He was gone five long minutes. Scully raised an eyebrow at him on the way back.

‘They gave me the run-around before I gave my name. All of a sudden there was an opening to see his assistant at 3 today. Seems she’s the dragon that guards the lair.’

‘Let’s go slay a dragon,’ Scully said. Her grin spread all the way to her eyes.

The silence that inhabited the car on the drive towards DC was contemplative and companionable. When they arrived in the guest parking of the Hilton, Mulder pulled the car into park and Scully let out a reluctant sigh.

‘How are we going to handle this? I feel like we’re FBI again and you’re my new partner,’ Mulder joked.

Scully was back to the weary half-smile, but her eyes looked grateful for the levity. ‘You do the talking. You’re better at it and you seem to enjoy it more.’

Mulder glared but it was good-natured. They left the car and slammed the doors in unison. As they walked up the stairs to the lobby his hand drifted to her back. They entered together, coats billowing in the breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now we see a few old "friends" and the plot is thickening.
> 
> More action in the next chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge apologies this took so long! There was a lot more re-writing than I expected, and I've been very busy in real life.

The assistant to the SRSG had stiff hair and stiff shoulders and the very plausible name of Marita Covarrubias. Her voice was a mix of husk and reluctance that made Scully roll her eyes and Mulder roll over on his back. They were on to the relative merits of DC restaurants when Scully interjected tersely:

‘About why we’re here.’

‘Oh yes,’ Marita said smoothly. ‘I have something for you.’ She reached into her overcoat and produced a keyring with a red plastic tag. She handed it to Mulder like a high priestess trusting a sacred relic to a plucky urchin boy. ‘It was found in Angela Forbes’ possession soon after she died. A… colleague retrieved it.’ She looked at Scully but also through her. ‘You have enemies, Dr Scully, but you also have friends. Sometimes a person is both at once.’ She turned to Mulder. ‘Do you know what Angela is?’

Mulder blinked. ‘Is she my sister?’

‘Perhaps,’ Marita said. ‘But I doubt it. There are so many of them. It’s difficult to know.’

‘So many of what?’ Scully asked. Marita turned back to her and this time saw her. They shared a look of comradeship and mutual distrust, a look shared by women in men’s worlds, and also castaways. Calculating whether someone’s flesh is worth more to you than their company.

‘I have a three-fifteen,’ Marita said crisply. ‘I trust you can see yourself out.’

‘Wait a minute – you can’t do that! Tell us what you know,’ Mulder said, taking a step towards her.

Marita looked him up and down. In her eyes was the practiced disinterest that Scully wore like armor and Marita wore like a silk dress. ‘I don’t wish to keep the Ambassador for Chile waiting, Mr Mulder. If you wish to see me again, you’re welcome to make an appointment.’

She didn’t make it clear whether the visit would be social or business, but Scully took Mulder’s arm and led him out before the distinction was examined.

 

In front of Scully’s office a small fat man was yelling.

‘You’ve been nothin’ but trouble since you been here, Red, and I tell you what, your payment account’s the same colour as your hair, and I tell you what else – ’

Nobody heard what else because Scully swept past the man, dragging Mulder behind her, and slammed the hazy glass door in his face.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Scully said, barreling over to her desk.

‘I wasn’t,’ Mulder said, eyes fixed on the floor.

The phone was a proud black piece with a round dial that looked as though it would be more in place in a news office in the 1950s. Scully violated it with sharp, fast movements, pulling out various metal entrails. One of these was a small round piece of plastic and she whipped her head up to grin triumphantly at Mulder, her hair falling in fluffy waves around her face.

‘Not bad,’ Mulder said, approaching. ‘You think they put it in when they broke in yesterday?’ His hands drifted towards her hair.

Scully blew the hair out of her face and bent down to tear the phone cord out of the wall. Mulder’s hands snapped to his side. ‘Of course they did, you think I don’t search for bugs constantly? But we were rushing… They must have overheard me telling the Lone Gunmen we were heading to Raleigh, and decided to beat us to it.’

‘And with Agents Coulton and Krycek on the case, what do you think the chances are that anyone will see the need to suspect foul play?’

‘She’s probably already been cremated,’ Scully said. She glared at her disorderly office like a schoolmarm glares at an untucked shirt.

‘What do you think Marita meant about there being others like Angela?’

‘I don’t know,’ Scully said, reading the plastic red tag on the keyring, ‘but I bet whatever’s at 7400 New Ridge Road, Stoney Run, will help.’

 

There wasn’t much at Stoney Run, but the key unlocked the thin white door in between two thick big warehouses. Through a thin green corridor and down thin metal stairs they came to a window with thick glass and a thicker-looking man sitting behind it.

‘What number,’ he said through a beardful of donut burger.

‘Well that’s a funny story,’ Scully said in a breathless voice that wasn’t like any of her other voices. ‘The thing is, I only just opened it, and honestly, I can never remember – would it help if I gave you my name?’

‘It might help,’ he said dully. ‘But I’m here every day, sweetie, and I don’t remember you opening no box.’

‘Oh – well, to be honest,’ the breathiness dropped an octave, turned conspiratorial, ‘I didn’t come myself, I had my secretary do it.’

‘Did you just,’ said the man. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Angela Forbes. I don’t know, maybe that’s the name the box is under.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ The man raised an eyebrow at Mulder. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Oh, that’s just Craig.’

‘Hm,’ the man said. ‘Say I remember your Angela Forbes. Say I know her box number. Say she never mentioned nothing about opening it for someone else.’

‘Say I give you ten bucks to remember she did.’ Scully had regained her breath.

‘Say it’s a tough time to make a livin’, and I got a family to support.’

‘Craig,’ Scully commanded, ‘give Mr. Mom here a twenty.’

Mulder glared at her but produced a wallet and from it a twenty dollar bill. He slid it under the glass and the man put it in a small metal box.

‘Key,’ he said. Scully handed it over. The man stood with difficulty and lumbered to the big white boxes in the corner of the room. He unlocked one and pulled out a manila folder. It fit under the glass and Scully reached for it greedily, but the man didn’t move his hand.

‘That comes back to me,’ he said, releasing the folder. Scully snatched it and pulled it open. Mulder peered at the contents over her shoulder, his breath moving the strands of hair by her ears.

There were only two things in the folder. The first was an old photograph, seventies-toned and thick. There was a caravan, a boy, a girl and a couple. The boy and girl had curly dark hair and the awkward lankiness of pre-adolescence. The woman had a hand on each of their shoulders and a meek expression.

The man had a cigarette in his mouth and a lot less wrinkles than he’d had in Raleigh.

‘Sam,’ Mulder breathed, taking the photo and holding it right up to his face.

The other thing was a catalog card from the Winchester Library for a book on alien abduction by a Cassandra Spender. Paperclipped to it was a photocopy of the inside of a dust jacket, and on it was a picture of the same woman, much older. Underneath her face was scrawled and underlined: Arlington Research Center. 96753331xxxx24

‘Mulder, this is the same woman.’ Scully held up the picture of the book. Mulder didn’t look away from the picture. Scully turned to the man behind the glass.

‘Do you have a photocopier?’

The man contemplated the question. ‘Does your friend have another twenty?’

 

They sat in a bar, Mulder nursing the photo of Sam and Scully nursing a whiskey. She was watching Mulder’s eyes closely, her brow furrowed and her pout pronounced. She might have been irritated but she was probably concerned.

‘Mulder, I think we should talk to the Lone Gunmen. They can research the address. Maybe take a guess at what that other number means.’

His eyes didn’t rise from the picture. ‘This is _her,_ Scully.’

‘Yes, when she was a child. Roche could have killed her after this. That man with the cigarette – ’

‘You think he killed her? I think he kidnapped her, brought her up as Angela Forbes, and when I started looking for her they faked a skeleton and an autopsy report. They got Roche to confess, then they they sent him to low-security. Angela found out about her real family and sent me her address.’

‘Then why didn’t she try harder to contact you? Why did your father kill himself? And do you think it’s just a coincidence that Sam’s adoptive mother was a woman who claims to have been the victim of alien abduction?’

A slick-faced waiter appeared with two bowls of spaghetti and placed them in front of them. Mulder sighed and the fight exhaled out with his breath. His shoulders hunched like a puppet with no one holding the stick ‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily. ‘Let’s just eat.’

After they had finished eating they walked out into air that was thick with the threat of snow. Mulder tightened his scarf around his neck.

‘This is what I miss the least about being in the FBI,’ he said. ‘Not being able to trust anyone.’

‘You can trust me.’ He looked at her like already did. ‘I don’t let my clients down,’ Scully said crisply. ‘Or my partners.’

Mulder grinned. ‘What about your partners in crime?’

‘Them least of all.’ Scully’s red lips quirked into a good-humored smile. Her dimple even went along for the ride.

 

At her request Mulder drove Scully to her apartment to “freshen up”. She wouldn’t let him come inside so he sat in the car staring intently at the front door.

Scully emerged fifteen minutes later with a fresh face of make-up and a large trench coat.

‘You packing?’ Mulder asked grimly as she entered the car.

‘I’m preparing.’

Mulder put the car in drive and headed for Arlington.

 

‘Looks like the only thing you’d research here is how to blend concrete,’ Mulder remarked as they approached the Arlington Research Center on foot.

The Research Centre was a big concrete box in a sea of big concrete boxes under a dark concrete sky. On Scully’s suggestion they’d parked a couple of blocks away and walked, their dark coats blowing out behind them.

‘We can’t all work from a cozy armchair,’ Scully said, tossing away her second cigarette of the walk.

‘That’s not fair. Sometimes I meet patients in coffee shops.’

Scully didn’t laugh. She peered down a concrete alleyway that was empty and too clean. ‘You knew what was good for you, you’d run back to one of those coffee shops right now.’

‘I was FBI too, Scully. I know the drill.’

‘You don’t know anything.’ Scully lit another cigarette. ‘Criminals are one thing. We’re talking about is a secret syndicate at the heart of the United States Government. Once you acknowledge the extent of it, it changes everything.’

‘Well, maybe I need a change,’ Mulder said. Scully smiled, soft and sad.

‘You want a change, get a sports car and a wife,’ she said. ‘You want to fuck up your life completely, devote it to chasing conspiracies with only yourself and a flashlight for company.’

‘I’m not alone, though,’ he said. ‘I have you.’

Scully shrugged and they walked on. Together their coats approached the front door of the Research Center.

The door was large and metal, with a small round circle on it where a camera was. Mulder looked uneasily into this while Scully pressed a buzzer to the right of the door.

A tinny female voice said, ‘Names please.’

‘Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.’

There was a long pause. Mulder leaned towards Scully and whispered in her ear, ‘Seem to be having some trouble unrolling their welcome mat.’

Scully didn’t smile and the door opened.

‘Come in,’ the voice said. Mulder and Scully walked into a dark corridor and turned to see a woman in a lab coat who looked exactly like Angela Forbes.

‘Angela?’ gasped Scully.

‘Samantha?’ gasped Mulder.

‘Neither, I’m afraid.’ The woman shook her head. ‘You can call me Twenty.’

‘Don’t you have a name?’ asked Scully.

‘That is my name,’ she said. ‘Everyone in my batch shares it, of course.’

‘What are you?’ Scully asked. Mulder glared at her, but Twenty smiled beatifically.

‘We are cloned from the DNA of Mr. Mulder’s sister,’ Twenty said. ‘There are many of us, all around the country. Some of us have escaped those who created us. We are in hiding. There are others, traitors and moles, who help us. Here at the Center, we put ourselves to use on behalf of our Cause.’ She turned her smile to Mulder. ‘I expect it is difficult for you. But we are grateful for Samantha’s contribution.’

‘Was Angela a clone?’ Scully asked.

‘I can’t be sure. If she was a clone, she was sophisticated. A relatively recent model. We tested her and found no evidence of cloning. Her memories were robust, except, of course, for her early life. She remembered growing up on an air force base, going to many boarding schools, to college. She remembered being told to change her name, to keep a low profile, because her father had enemies. Only recently did she uncover memories of being Samantha Mulder.’

‘What about the body at the FBI?’ said Mulder.

Twenty looked at him as though he were a sad wet dog. Mulder looked at her as though she would throw him a bone any moment. ‘No,’ said Twenty. ‘That body was one of the Harvester models. They were an early experiment and are not as able as we researchers, but they are kept on to harvest crops.’

‘What crops? Where?’ demanded Scully, but Mulder said, ‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying.’

‘Mulder,’ Scully hissed.

‘No Scully, you don’t get it.’ Mulder gripped her forearms and shook them. His eyes bulged with conviction. ‘It’s her, we’ve found her, it’s Angela. She was raised in some other family and when she remembered the truth she had some kind of psychotic break and concocted this science fiction fantasy but it’s _her_ , Scully, you’ve found her for me.’ He turned to Twenty, still gripping Scully’s arms. ‘It’s me, Sam, it’s Fox. You’re safe now. Don’t you remember? I’m your brother.’

Twenty stared at him impassively. ‘I’m sure you were a very good brother and I am sorry for you, but I am not your sister. I am the reason they took your sister.’ She turned back to Scully. ‘I do not know how she found us, but Angela approached us three weeks ago. She was very afraid. She knew that if the men who had abducted Samantha Mulder knew who she was, they would destroy her.’

‘But the cigarette smoking man, he pretended to be her father,’ Scully said. ‘And that woman, Cassandra Spender. She says she was abducted too.’

‘After Samantha Mulder was abducted, she lived with that man and his family for some time,’ Twenty said. ‘When she contacted us, she wanted to know about Cassandra Spender’s abduction as well as hers.’

‘The book,’ Scully said. She pulled the photocopied pages of the dust jacket and the catalogue card from her pocket.

Twenty took them. She started.

‘That number… do you know what that means?’ she demanded. ‘Have you seen the spread sheet?’

‘I – yes, I have it in a dead drop. It had five columns? Lots of numbers?’

Twenty jerked over to a computer monitor nearby and began typing swiftly. As she typed she continued, ‘This will help you decode the spreadsheet. In the resistance, we are many, but we must be secretive. Angela had a copy of the spread sheet when she came here. She stole it from her father. She had unencrypted some of it herself. But we didn’t trust her with the rest of the codes – ’

A computer terminal on the other side of the room made a whirring noise and didn’t stop. Scully said, ‘They must know about you,’ and Mulder said, ‘He’s not her father.’

Twenty addressed Scully first. ‘Of course they know about us. They have had that spread sheet for years. But they don’t have the rest of the codes.’ She turned to Mulder. ‘The man who smokes the cigarettes is a terrible man, but he rescued Samantha. He hid her from the other conspirators. He gave her life. What he did was cruel to your family. But it was something.’

‘Then you don’t think he’d have killed her,’ Scully said.

‘I would put nothing past those men,’ said Twenty. ‘But I think he did love Angela.’

‘Why was he so interested in her?’ Mulder asked. ‘Even if what you’re saying is true… If his wife was abducted, sure, save her. But why steal Sam, just to have a pretend daughter?’

Twenty blinked, very slowly. ‘But she was his daughter,’ she said. ‘Just as you are his son.’

Mulder went as pale as the linoleum. Scully pulled her arms out of his and wrapped one around his back. They stood face-to-face, breathing each other’s breaths and sharing the horrors they’d seen in each other’s eyes.

‘He’s not my father,’ Mulder said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Scully said.

‘Dad… Dad must have known. Mom…’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Scully said. ‘The father you knew is your real father. That man – he’s a freak, Mulder, he’s sick. He’s just playing with Samantha, with Angela, with you, the way he does with everyone. People’s lives mean nothing to him. We’re all just background characters in his deluded fantasies.’

‘How do we know that this isn’t another trick? That she’s who she says she is? Clones, abductions, fabricated memories...’

The computer let out a beep. Twenty walked over and pulled out a floppy disc. She put it into a case and handed it to Scully.

‘These are the codes. They will help you interpret the spread sheet. You will know where we are, those of us who are fighting. We can help you.’

‘Thank you,’ Scully said.

Twenty nodded at Mulder. ‘If he can walk,’ she said, ‘I will show you around.’


End file.
